


Mortal Stories

by Nerd_of_Camelot



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: #shovelallthezombies, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction, Not Beta Read, Rating May Change, Team Dynamics, Typical 'Tuber Antics, Zombies, also, also also, heavy emphasis on the &s in those relationships, just sayin, references to the fic that inspired it, these boys all need hugs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-03-24 19:22:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13817799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerd_of_Camelot/pseuds/Nerd_of_Camelot
Summary: None of them were expecting this, but one of them wasmarginallymore prepared than the others. Now that they've survived the first two months, though... They have to make it through to the end. Will they all make it? Or will they all meet their ends in this cruel nightmare of a world?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What is Faith (Just a Sequence of Grace and Gravity)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/966653) by [liliwick_the_WORD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliwick_the_WORD/pseuds/liliwick_the_WORD). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned above: this work was inspired by the work [What is Faith (Just a Sequence of Grace and Gravity) ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/966653/chapters/1896804) by liliwick_the_WORD, because I absolutely _love_ that story.  
>  This story has actually been sitting around on a document in my Google Drive and collecting dust since late 2014. For the past four years it has been just. Sitting there. As a three sentence idea on an otherwise blank document. So after somehow stumbling onto "What is Faith" again around the 25th/26th of February, after having forgotten the name some time in 2015, and rereading that masterpiece (which you should read, by the way), I decided I'd finally clean up my act and do this idea justice.  
> However, the original idea was still written in my 2014 writing style (yikes) and there wasn't much direction to the three sentences I'd jotted down (double yikes). So here's that idea V2.0: now with vaguely comprehensible storyline!
> 
> Anyways, I've talked more than long enough so thank y'all for clicking on this and I hope you enjoy the story!

If someone had told him six months ago that this was how his life was going to be for... However fucking long it was going to be like this… He was almost certain he would have laughed right in their face.

Hell, if someone had told him five, four, three, two months ago, he’d have done the same thing. He’d have laughed at them right up until about one month ago.

That wasn’t to say that he really believed that it was happening, even now, or that it had only started about a month ago, of course, but it was starting to get hard to brush it off as a continuous nightmare. It had been going on long enough that his suspended disbelief was getting… Well. He was having trouble continuing to suspend it, if that made sense.

… This had all started about two and a half months ago, actually.

He really couldn’t help thinking about it.

 

* * *

 

` **June 20XX** `

It all began on one cloudy day - about mid-June, he thought. The air creeping in through his open window was humid. Muggy. He’d just woken up, and so he was still cotton-mouthed and groggy when he stumbled to the opening and all but slammed it closed. He’d forgotten it was open, if he was honest, but was glad to remember that Kitty hadn’t been in his room when he’d opened it. That meant if she was outside, she gotten out through the cat flap, not by jumping from the second story, and that was all he cared about.

He yawned, shuffling to his bedroom door and exiting into the hall - only after he remembered to grab his glasses from his desk, of course. Distantly, he finally registered the sound of a dog barking a few times before going quiet, likely having been silenced by its owner.

It was probably Jello, the Mastiff from three houses down. Jello had a barking problem. Kitty liked Jello, though, and Jello seemingly liked Kitty as well. They’d been caught cuddling on many occasions. He never mentioned it to Kitty, since he figured the cat would just steal his bed _more_ if he embarrassed her… Which was silly, he knew, but still. Cats were smart animals, and he existed in a constant state of half-asleep bullshittery when nothing pertinent was happening, ultimately leading to dumb thoughts such as that one.

He continued his awkward, half-asleep shuffle on down the stairs to the main living area of the house. He scrubbed at his eyes uncomprehendingly when he found no one else present. Slowly rousing himself fully from his stupor, he first went to check the backyard for his family, who should reasonably have been in the house by now, he thought. He chose to ignore that he was currently still shirtless when he popped his head out the back door.

No one.

He hummed and retreated back into the house, glancing toward a clock.

Oh, only about two in the afternoon. Nevermind - the house had every reason to be empty aside from him.

Still, he considered calling his sister, just to make sure she was okay. He wasn’t sure _why_ he wanted to call. He just had this feeling like he should.

So he did, grabbing the landline and dialing the familiar number.

_“What’s up?”_ His sister answered on the first ring, astonishingly enough.

“Nothing yet.” He replied. “I just. Had this overwhelming urge to check up on you? I dunno. How are you? Are you okay?”

_“I’m fine.”_ Her voice conveyed vague irritation beneath her amusement. _“Why the sudden interest in my well being?”_

“I told you - I dunno. I just felt like I needed to call you.”

_“Well, you called, and I’m fine.”_ He could almost feel her rolling her eyes. _“I’ll call you back if that changes, yeah? I have stuff to be doing.”_

“Yeah, okay. Stay safe!”

_“You too.”_

After the call cut off, he would admit that all he did for the next ten minutes was search for food while considering whether or not he should put on a shirt. Once he’d settled on the couch with a can of ravioli that, yes, he absolutely _did_ intend to eat without microwaving, he decided against the shirt. He just grabbed the TV remote and flipped it on. He was expecting the local news station to come on, of course, because someone in the house always makes sure that was how it was before they left for work or school or whatever they did since school was out of the question seeing as it was June. He wasn’t sure who did it, but he also wasn’t too concerned about it.

He shovelled a forkful of the ravioli into his mouth without changing the channel for the time being. He just stared down the current news story with no real interest, not really focusing on it too much.

Well, he wasn’t focusing on it too much _at first._

He perked right up, however, when the word “riot” appeared on the screen, coinciding with the news anchor’s utterance of it. Well, perhaps “perked up” wouldn’t be the right phrasing - it was more like he sat up a little straighter and listened a little more intently. “Perking up” would imply that the mention of a riot made him happy, which would be… Incorrect.

_“-broke out in …… a few minutes ago. Witnesses say it began when one man, pictured here-”_ Featured on the screen was a very grainy, zoomed-in frame from what was obviously security camera footage. The man pictured was still recognizable as a human being rather than a colored blob, so at least there was that. Although he looked a little… Well, a little ill. Still - he didn’t recognize him. _“-began to savagely attack another man. The brawl has since turned into a full-blown frenzy, and there are reports of -_ **_oh god!_ ** _”_

As the exclamation left the anchor’s mouth, the footage that had begun to play, presumably from a live feed, showed five or six people attempting to hold back the man who had started the brawl. But one of those attempting to subdue him had him in a choke hold. Their grip slipped. The brawler took the chance, teeth gnashing like a rabid animal, to sink those teeth into the flesh presented in front of his face.

Breath caught in his throat, he watched in horrified silence as the brawler jerked his head away and tore off a large, fleshy chunk of the man’s arm… And proceeded to swallow it down much like a hippogriff devouring a pheasant.

The broadcast cut away from the video feed, zeroing in on the anchors and their mortified expressions, but he was no longer paying attention. His mind replayed what he had just seen.

He’d just watched a man bite off and eat a chunk of another man’s arm. He’d just watched a man who looked sickly and yet had to be held back by _six_ people bite off and eat a chunk of another man’s arm.

His mind knew what was happening, even if he didn’t want to admit it. Even if he thought it was outlandish. Impossible. Pure fiction. There were only three scenarios in which people who looked physically ill were strong enough to have to be subdued by multiple people _and_ had a craving for flesh, and none were good. It was either Ghouls, Vampires, or Zombies.

Considering it was broad daylight in Florida and vampires tended toward solely blood, however, he thought the other two more likely.

The _logical_ explanation that his brain supplied a moment later was that this was just another freak on bath salts. Just another crazy son of a bitch who did some drugs he really shouldn’t have and now he was eating somebody’s arm. The last guy ate somebody’s face, right?

Yeah, that was totally reasonable.

Still, he found himself back at the phone a few moments later, dialing his sister’s number once more.

“You need to be careful on your way home.” He informed her before she could greet him. “There was - or is - a, uh… Well there’s a riot along your usual route. And one of the participants is batshit fucking psycho.”

_“How do you know that?”_ Her voice was perplexed, at best.

“I was watching the news. I just watched him bite off a chunk of some dude’s arm and _eat_ it.” There was a grave silence between them for a moment. “Be _careful.”_

_“Will do.”_ She finally agreed, voice barely there. She sounded shell-shocked - and who could blame her? _“Are you gonna be okay?”_

“I’m a grown man, sis. I think I can stay alive sitting alone in our house.”

She didn’t reply to that, and he hung up after giving her ample time to do so, but not without one last, “Stay safe!”

Regardless of his rational reasoning that this was _probably_ just another fuckwad on drugs, he couldn’t help the way his mind went to survival mode after he hung up. He shovelled the last of the ravioli into his mouth despite the way his stomach rolled at the sight of red sauce after what he’d just seen. He settled that by pretending it was just a violent movie, since fictional violence didn’t make him sick.

After that, he quickly did up his fork and disposed of the can before making his way back upstairs. He snagged a duffel bag from his closet and paused to put on a shirt and proper pants before anything else. His mind ran through possibilities, and he decided he’d better do something to make the supplies he packed as quiet as possible. Water bottles were a necessity, but they could be loud, and loud was bad in the case of possible zombie apocalypse… So he grabbed a few bandanas and shirts that he wasn’t too overly attached to, throwing them into the bag with the intent to use them to muffle the sounds of water bottles crinkling. And of canned foods knocking together.

He went ahead and slipped on some socks and shoes, just in case, before heading back down to the kitchen.

He grabbed the closest package of water bottles, one that was already open, and began to wrap bottles one by one in the shirts he’d grabbed first, two per shirt. Occasionally, when he had a big enough shirt, he’d wrap more than two bottles in the same shirt, but he could usually only manage one extra in that case.

He emptied the package of water bottles and still had over half of his duffel bag and a few more shirts to spare, so he packed about another twelve wrapped bottles into the bag. He was down to bandanas, and he felt kind of stupid for this whole preparation thing, but he ignored it and went to raid the pantry. He grabbed the non-perishables first - things like canned fruit cocktail and that weird off-brand can of Spaghetti-O’s that both he and his niece had been turning their noses up at for weeks.

The bandanas served their purpose well as he wrapped about three cans in each one  and piled them into the bag with only minimal clinking. He solved this by simply wrapping them tighter, and when he could lift and shake the bag without more than a little noise from within he decided to deem it a success. His current stash would be enough for a couple people in the event of being stranded for about a week, especially if they were careful and didn’t overeat.

That in mind, he filled the remaining space in the main pocket of the bag with some of the dubiously good-tasting protein shakes they had in the pantry and couple boxes of granola bars. As an afterthought he crammed a jar of peanut butter and two cans of Spam into the last gaps he had available, making sure to keep the Spam cans away from each other.

He went through a mental checklist of what he’d compiled so far.

Water, canned fruit, canned precooked pastas of varying types, exactly three cans of beans, a can of tomato soup, some beef stew, some chicken noodle soup, protein shakes/meal replacement shakes, granola bars of three or so different flavors, peanut butter, and two cans of Spam.

Considering his niece refused to eat Spam and didn’t like the protein shakes, he figured he, his sister, and the kiddo could get by pretty okay with this stuff.

He trekked to the downstairs bathroom with the now significantly heavier duffel bag thrown over his shoulder like a normal backpack and proceeded to raid the rather sparse medical supplies they had, throwing a box of bandaids, a tube of triple antibiotic ointment, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a ziploc baggie of Q-Tips into the end pocket of the bag, where he’d previously stored a baggie of plastic eating utensils. Well, he had to shove the rubbing alcohol in with the foodstuffs, actually, but what mattered was that it got in there. Eventually.

Ideally, he wanted to be able to take some clothes, too, in case things got bad and he _did_ need to use this survival bag of his anytime soon, but he knew that wasn’t really within the realm of possibilities. Packing clothes meant bringing another bag, and bringing another bag meant he’d move much slower if he needed to be out and about.

It occurred to him that he could also have his sister pack a supply bag, and then they’d have even _more_ supplies, which would last them even longer. Or he could pack it for her and just convince her to carry it.

Thinking about it, though, he kind of wanted to phone his mom and have her pack a bag for her and his little brother just in case. Chances were she’d blow it off, though, and his little brother wasn’t allowed to answer the phone.

He’d just have his sister drop by there if the need arose, he decided, and take them through the steps of packing after he took her through the steps.

_If_ any of that needed to happen, that was. He had to remind himself that this was _probably_ just a dude tweaked out of his mind on drugs. No way in hell this was a for real zombie apocalypse or anything. That would be too damn unreal.

He trudged back up to his room, plopping the full supply bag onto his bed and wondering if he’d forgotten anything that might be important. It was with some embarrassment that he realized he should probably take his phone and his portable charger… And both of his wall-chargers, just in case both his phone and the portable charger died. That in mind he dug his portable charger out of one of his desk drawers and checked it - only a little juice left.

Humming, he grabbed his phone from the desk and unplugged it, taking note of the 100% charge and breathing a sigh of relief. He hadn’t plugged it in until about 9 this morning when he woke up half an hour after he went to bed with the realization his phone was dead. He replaced the phone with his portable charger, watching the one blue light signifying its near-dead state begin to flash before turning solid blue once more. The one next to it began to flash, and he knew it would take some time for it to solidify; probably fifteen to twenty minutes, and then the next light would begin to flash. This would repeat until all four lights glowed solid blue.

All in all it would take about 45 minutes to an hour for the damn thing to be fully charged, which was fine. That gave him time to pack his sister’s survival bag and assess the real threat level of what was going on outside… And maybe enough time to find and prepare anything that could be used to fortify the house against the very unlikely threat of zombies.

In the end, he packed his sister’s survival bag using some of her shirts instead of his own, and one of her own duffel bags. He used the rest of his bandanas packing her canned goods - all except one. His favorite, a black one with white _and_ red designs, was saved for whatever else he might need to use it for. He quickly divvied up the rest of the supplies he’d grabbed, throwing half the box of bandaids into her bag and keeping half for himself. He provided her with her own rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips. After that, he turned the TV back on and listened to the reports as he assessed the room for entries and exits, and things to barricade the room with should the need arise.

So far the only news on the riot was that it appeared more people were starting to flip their shit. There was no definite, concrete connection between the initial starter of the brawl and those who were rampaging now, except that he was pretty freaking sure that he saw the man who’d had a chunk taken out of his arm among those who were now being subdued.

He tried to ignore it, and when he realized there would likely be nothing concrete for a long while yet he shut off the TV and started to check over the rest of the house. He decided before leaving the room, however, that the TV stand or couch would make wonderful barricades for the front door. He’d need help to move them, though… _If_ he needed to move them.

Amidst his search for places to block off and things to block them off with, he dared to venture out to the back yard and into the shed. From there he pillaged a bunch of two-by-fours and a hammer and nails. He also took a chunk of plywood that he thought could be used to cover at least one window on its own.

He ventured back out there after bringing those items in, checking the place over for anything he could use as a weapon. He humored the idea of using the shovel in the corner, but… No. A shovel would be impractical, wouldn’t it? And besides, he wasn’t sure if he could manage to make himself bash what was once a normal person over the head with a shovel.

_IF_ that needed to happen. He really needed to stop assuming that he was going to have to fight these crazy fuckers, regardless of whether they were druggies or zombies. Or ghouls. It didn’t matter what they were. Chances were he wouldn’t actually need most of the things he was prepping right now. Honestly, worst case scenario (that being a zombie apocalypse, of course), he wouldn’t need to survive for too terribly long. Eventually the zombies would rot into nothing from the heat, right? Eventually something would happen and they’d all sort of die off again, except this time it would be for good.

Best case scenario, though, it was a bunch of druggies and everything would be sorted out sooner rather than later.

By almost four in the afternoon, he’d arranged all the necessary items around the house where they’d be needed (maybe) and ventured down into the basement to look for weapons, as there hadn’t been anything good in the garage. Nothing except that shovel.

In the basement he discovered an aluminum baseball bat, an unfinished wooden sword he’d been working on for his niece, an abundance of cardboard boxes and mason jars, old pictures, and an abundance of otherwise useless junk. The bat could, perhaps, be useful if he could swing it hard enough.

Despite expecting considerable suspicion for it, he Googled how many times you had to hit somebody in the head with a metal baseball bat before they died from it. He didn’t receive any _definitive_ answers on that, but he did find that, in general, all it took was one or two strong hits before your opponent went down, and that was with a breathing human who could still think and try to defend themselves. He imagined two or three good, _strong_ hits to a zombie’s could take one out. He also learned that you should never go after someone’s torso with a bat, since all you’d manage is knocking the wind them and subsequently pissing them off.

Good to know.

He grabbed it, just in case, and kept looking. Eventually he unearthed a boxed set of knives that he was sure belonged to his sister. The box still held all but three of the original knives, all still in protective plastic casings. He snagged one of the French Chef’s knives (the kind of knife commonly referred to as a butcher knife - and don’t ask how he knew that) and spent the better part of the next fifteen minutes finding a way to attach it and its plastic sheath to his pants.

He managed by strategically poking holes into the plastic casing and threading a piece of twine through there. He replaced the knife into the sheath, tied the ends of the twine together around one of his belt loops, and then headed back upstairs with the baseball bat.

His phone went off in his pocket as he emerged back into the kitchen from the door of the basement.

[4:06pm] _Have you seen the news today?_

He furrowed his brows at the message, and only furrowed them further when he read the contact name - Mark. Why in the world was Mark asking if he’d seen the news?

[4:07pm] _why do you ask?_

He continued back into the living room while he waited for a response.

[4:07pm] _We’re having some kinda weird riot in LA right now. Saw something about one near you. Wanted to know what you knew about it._

He hummed at that. That was fair. But that also meant that this wasn’t an isolated incident… But, hey, whatever, right? Riots were pretty normal occurrences in America, honestly. It couldn’t be _that_ weird that two were happening on the same day on opposite sides of the country, could it?

[4:08pm] _all i know is that it started as some sort of fistfight and it just got worse from there. watched a guy rip off part of another guy’s arm with his teeth. it was SICK man._

[4:09pm] _Knowing you, I’m having a hard time figuring out if you mean “sick” as in “cool” or “sick” as in “gross”_

He laughed to himself.

[4:09pm] _¯\\_(ツ)_/¯_

He pottered on over to the stairs after shutting the basement door, going back to his room to unplug his portable charger and get ready to pack it away. Upon getting it, however, he was hit with a predicament that he hadn’t considered before - Florida was hot as hell during the day, but the hottest places in the world tended to get colder than seemed realistic at night, so what was he going to do about that? He could pack a blanket, but he’d have to make room in his duffel bag for that. Was being warm worth having less food? Even if he just had to leave behind a couple bottles of water or a single can, he was putting himself at a disadvantage just by trying to keep warm.

He could wear a jacket, but during the day he’d probably make himself pass out from heat exhaustion doing that, and tying it around his waist was a potential safety hazard if he needed to run. However, shoving it into his duffel bag, while still an issue of maybe having to leave something behind for the sake of warmth, was much more feasible than a blanket… And wearing it during the day, even if it did lead to potential heat exhaustion, would _also_ keep the sun off of him and give him some protection from rain as well as keeping him warm at night.

His thoughts were interrupted by his phone.

[4:13pm] _Just be careful, okay?_

He smiled slightly. That was just like Mark, to be worried like that. He was actually a pretty sweet guy, even if he was a huge doofus.

[4:13pm] _I’ll do my best._

He sighed as he put his phone away again, deciding it was worth it to take a jacket. Considering it a moment longer, he decided to tie it around his duffel bag like he’d tie it around his waist.

After he did that, he trudged back downstairs to check the news again. He knew why he was doing all of this, and it wasn’t because he thought the zombie apocalypse was a real possibility. He was doing this to keep occupied. To feel like he was getting something done. The whole “riot” thing just gave him an outlet by giving him something to think about. If he hadn’t started working on survival stuff, he’d just be sitting on the couch growing steadily more anxious as time went by.

He grabbed the remote to turn the TV back on, only to have the landline phone begin to ring.

Wow, busy day today.

But he swore, if it was his mother asking him if he’d seen the news… He’d scream.

“Yeah?”

_“Bro, you need to get the fuck out of dodge as soon as humanly possible.”_ His sister’s voice greeted him, grim and flat and perhaps a bit garbled by some sort of interference.

“What?” He spluttered, “Why?!”

_“Because this isn’t just a riot.”_ She told him, and he heard her swallow. _“I’m on my way home right now. This is_ not _a riot. This is… God, this is something else entirely.”_

“You’re not making much sense.” He informed her carefully, “What do you mean by that?”

_“I mean you’re going to need to pack up and get the hell out. It’s not going to be safe there for much longer.”_

“Sis-”

_“These are fucking_ zombies, _okay? Not rioters. Get out of the house. Get as far away as you can.”_

“That’s not funny.” He hissed, certain that she was just screwing with him. She had to be. She’d never actually believe that zombies could exist. She _had_ to be teasing him and trying to spike his paranoia.

_“It’s not supposed to be.”_ She sighed deeply, _“Look, I know I said that zombies were purely fiction and that we’d never experience an actual zombie outbreak, but I changed my mind. There’s no way these are living people anymore. They keep-”_ She was cut off by a loud set of thumps on her end, punctuated by her shrieking loudly. When she began to speak again (and he was relieved that she was still speaking), she sounded winded and terrified. Almost like she was a second away from sobbing. In the background he heard his niece doing exactly that. _“They keep trying to get in the car. I’ve seen them up close. These are not living people. Get out of the house.”_

He took a breath. “Okay. Okay. Well at least now the preparations didn’t go to waste…” He trailed, prepared to hang up since his mind was occupied and, admittedly, he wasn’t thinking too clearly now. He was tired as hell. He needed more sleep than he’d gotten, but now there was no way he was getting it.

_“What preparations?”_

Oh. Oh yeah. He hadn’t told her about the survival packs yet. Or the gear for fortifying the house.

“I put together a couple of supply bags. Food, water, medical supplies - that sort of stuff. I needed something to do with myself.” He explained, trying to sound like he wasn’t starting to freak out just a little. His sister might have been older than he was, but sometimes he had to be the older sibling and stay calm for her. “And I got some stuff together that we could use to barricade the entrances of the house.” He paused, “You sure you want me to fuck off on my own, sis? Shouldn’t we stick together?”

_“No time for that.”_ She said immediately. _“By the time I get there they might already be in the neighborhood. I need to be able to get in and get out, and no offense, but you don’t exactly move as fast as I’d need you to.”_ She was the one who paused this time. _“You said bags, right? Like there’s more than one?”_

“I made one for you and one for me.”

_“Okay. Thank you. I… Be careful, okay?”_

“Will do. But you have to stay safe for me, yeah?”

_“When have I ever done otherwise?”_ She joked weakly. Silence. _“Hurry up and get out of there. I love you. Please don’t die.”_

“I love you too, sis. And I’ll do my best.”

The call disconnected. He hung up the phone. He found himself back upstairs and grabbing his jacket-wrapped duffel bag before he really processed going up the stairs. He shoved his wall-chargers into the side pocket of the bag and the portable charger into the back pocket of his pants. He snagged his last bandana and tied it around his neck for the time being, and then, as an afterthought, grabbed one very specific shirt that he knew his niece loved.

He barely touched the stairs on the way back down, and he was aware that he was making entirely too much noise. He could work on that later. Now was not the time for stealth.

He shoved the shirt into his sister’s bag, simultaneously shoving down the urge to cry at the idea that he might not ever see his niece or sister again. He didn’t have time for that. The very last thing he did concerning his sister was to throw her bag near the front door after making sure there was a flashlight in it.

He grabbed his own flashlight and the bat he’d picked. A full pack of extra batteries for the flashlight were shoved into one of the jacket’s pockets for the time being. He threw a second one (though he was astonished there was a second one in the first place) toward his sister’s bag for her flashlight. Hopefully she’d grab them.

He deeply considered which way to leave the house (or as deeply as he had time for, given the circumstances) and decided against the front door. Therefore, he went to the back door instead, opening it. He paused halfway out the door and turned to look at his home. Deep breath. He stepped the rest of the way out and closed the back door behind him.

The click of it latching felt something like a death sentence.

He pulled his bandana up over his mouth and nose and set off, not allowing himself a final look at his house. Lord knew if he looked back again he wouldn’t be able to make himself leave. Wouldn’t be able to take his sister’s advice.

He kept walking even as the reality that he was officially living in the apocalypse came crashing down on him.

 

* * *

 

After the sun went down the first day, about three hours after he started walking, he found himself too tired to continue. He admitted it was probably for the best that he start sleeping at night, despite the sleep schedule he’d inhabited for most of the rest of his life. In this situation, there could be no more falling asleep at eight AM and sleeping until four PM. Hell, there couldn’t really be any falling asleep at all unless he was sure he was safe.

He trudged into a thinly wooded area on the side of the road somewhere between his city and the next one. Choosing a spot that would be reasonably hidden from view, he settled down at the base of a tree and sighed. He untied the jacket from his duffel bag and put it on, then dug around in the bag to get a water bottle. He’d been sweating since about five PM and it was about damn time he rehydrated himself.

He ate a can of raviolis for dinner.

He ended up using his duffel bag as a pillow.

 

* * *

 

He woke at, according to his phone, five in the morning. He took a swig from his water bottle, stowed it back in the bag, and decided now was as good a time as any to start walking again.

He walked until sundown, only stopping here and there to rest and rehydrate himself. He had fruit cocktail for lunch.

He slept under a bridge.

 

* * *

 

Another day, another early start. He walked until sundown. He fell asleep leaned against the back of a house.

 

* * *

 

He came face to face with his first zombie on his fourth day walking. It had been another early start to the day, which he was starting to get used to. He’d kept his jacket on, hood up, instead of taking it off and tying it back around the duffel bag like he had the past couple of days. He kept his bandana over his mouth.

He was walking down the road of an unsettlingly empty neighborhood at about noon when it happened.

He heard the shuffling, the groaning, before he saw anything. But when he stopped, stock still in the middle of the road, he saw the thing shuffling out from behind a car. It was even more hideous than he’d honestly been expecting, he’d admit. He hadn’t thought that an (at _most_ ) three-day old zombie would be so disgusting.

The thing had clearly once been a man. He could tell that much from the facial hair and lack of breasts. It had long, stringy patches of hair barely clinging to its head. Blood that was about the consistency of half-finished Jell-O oozed slowly from a large wound in its throat. He had little doubt that that injury was the one that had ended its life and sent its body on this hellish journey.

He quickly ducked down out of sight behind a fence, as quiet as he could manage, and waited for it to pass.

When it did, he got a much better look at it.

He hadn’t wanted to see the milky white, rotting eyes and the maggots squirming in the cavity of the throat. He hadn’t wanted to see those things at all. He was willing to just operate under the assumption that it was a rotting corpse without seeing all the specific, gorey details. But he got the details anyway.

As soon as he felt like it had wandered far enough away that he was out of earshot, he turned to the side and vomited. He braced himself against the fence, coughing up the remaining bile. Standing there, he hoped and prayed he hadn’t attracted any others by obliging the urge to alleviate the churning in his stomach.

He’d have to work on that, honestly. He wouldn’t get very far if he threw up every time he saw a zombie in person.

Later, he’d come to thank his lucky stars that most zombies he encountered had been out in the sun too long for the maggots to thrive. Sure, maggots didn’t tend to die from heat until the temperature was in the triple digits, but in the summer that wasn’t exactly a far stretch on some days. Not to mention he was _sure_ he’d read a study somewhere that said maggots generated a lot of heat on their own, which could easily turn the 90° average of a Florida summer into a death sentence for them.

As soon as his stomach settled completely, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stood up. He continued down the street for a while, turned off onto a street that had obviously been less populated than the last anyway before the apparent mass exodus of the neighborhood’s residents, and continued that way.

He continued in this fashion until sundown, eventually coming upon a neighborhood that still had some residents. He watched a family near the end of the block pile into their van and drive off, leaving their home behind for good. It made him wonder if his sister had made it out before the rush of traffic that had apparently happened between his departure and his arrival here in this town.

He tried the front door quietly, trying not to attract the attention of any neighbors, or worse, a zombie. It was locked. He cursed under his breath and went around back, checking the back door as well. Also locked. The house had an actual storm cellar, as well, with outside access, but… Well. He found out the hard way that the doors that led down there screeched like a banshee when moved. Best not to try his luck with them, even if the storm cellar turned out to be the safest place.

His last resort for the only house he knew for sure was abandoned, it seemed, was the shed there in the backyard.

He tried the doors to the shed and sighed in relief when the one he chose opened without issue. The only problem he could see, really, was that he could not lock the shed from the inside. He’d have to leave one of the doors ajar. He cringed at the thought, thinking that maybe he should just take his chances with the cellar for the sake of being able to lock himself in and for certain be safe from the undead, before deciding that the quiet shed was better for keeping himself hidden than the squeaky cellar.

So he settled down after getting the doors as close to fully closed as he could get them to stay, near the back of the shed. There wasn’t a whole lot of stuff in there (though there was some WD-40 he could use on the cellar door hinges if he needed to in the morning), so it was easy to find a spot and temporarily set up camp. He checked his phone for the first time since he’d left his last camp early this morning, finding he still had no messages of any sort. No service or wifi, either.

Damn.

It was about 8:47 PM according to the phone’s clock, however, which meant he should eat something soon and then go to bed.

Regardless, he chose to turn his phone off for the time being and look around the shed some more with his flashlight. He uncovered nothing useful, but that was fine. At least he’d gotten it out of the way.

He sat the flashlight down on the floor next to him, still on, and quickly dug into a can of food, just grabbing one at random. It ended up being a can of strawberries in light syrup, which he was aware weren’t near nutritious enough for him to survive off of. Because of this, he reluctantly retrieved one of the meal replacement shakes once he’d finished the can off and downed it in two gulps. It was the first one he’d touched, and he was hoping to keep from drinking too many of them any time soon. They’d be good for if he happened to run out of real food.

Against his better judgement, he finally disposed of the fork he’d been using for the past few days. Sure, it was plastic and could probably stand to be reused a few more times, but he wasn’t chancing making himself sick by not getting it clean enough - and there was really no point in cleaning a plastic fork.

Finally he felt tired - or, well, more tired than he already had. He shut off the flashlight and tucked himself up into the area he’d designated as his, falling asleep within minutes.

He woke to something squirming on top of him.

He managed to force himself not to scream when he opened his eyes and found the thing squirming on him was a zombie. He could see it pretty clearly in the moonlight that streamed in through the now open door to the shed.

For one horrifying moment he thought that the zombie had figured out he was in here, opened the door itself, and come to eat him.

But then he realized that it wasn’t currently trying to eat him.

It was trying to get up.

It managed after a few tense moments and shuffled around his legs, then toward the far back wall of the shed. It ran into said wall as if it didn’t know it was there.

He watched in horrified interest as it did the same thing three more times.

Finally it turned away from the wall and shuffled back toward the door. In the moonlight he could see its milky white eyes, and finally he made the connection…

Zombies were blind.

Against his better judgement, he lifted his arm and waved it at the zombie to test his hypothesis. It did not respond to the movement even though he was technically right in front of it. It just kept moving in its shuffling, stumbling gait toward the door, and once it made it there it shambled on off across the yard and right into the neighbor’s fence.

He waited for it to move well out of the yard before he pulled the shed door closed once more and pushed the only available item (a large piece of plywood) over to the doors and leaned it against them, plunging the small space into darkness when it covered the small windows in the door. Or, actually, he leaned the wood against the doorframe, that way the doors wouldn’t swing open from the weight.

Then he sat down where he’d previously been sleeping.

And sat.

And sat.

And when the sun finally came up a few hours later he hadn’t slept another wink.

He carefully removed the plywood from in front of the doors, letting it fall against the wall, and then snagged the WD-40 and his duffel bag. He checked to be sure the coast was clear, then crept out of the shed and to the side of the house where the storm cellar doors were.

A very liberal spraying of WD-40 onto the hinges later, he pulled the doors open with only some slight audible protest. He sprayed the hinges again, tucked the oil canister into his bag, and descended into the cellar. For safety purposes, he pulled the doors closed above him, plunging him into darkness.

His flashlight clicked on and he meandered quietly through the cellar, looking around. There were a few remaining cans of food, down here, but nothing that he trusted. The cans looked old as hell - probably why they’d been left here, if he was honest. So those were a no go. He wandered to the stairs leading up into the house proper and tried the door. Locked.

Sighing, he grabbed the handrails to steady himself, leaned back slightly, and kicked the door as hard as he could just below the handle. The wood splintered loudly beneath his foot. The door swung open. He stood still a moment, breathing slowly, and when he was sure there was no one coming after him at the sound, he crept into the house.

The room that the cellar led to was the same little mudroom that led out to the back yard, which wasn’t exactly surprising. Seeing as the storm cellar had a dirt floor, the folks living here probably didn’t want to get their nice floors dirty from going down there. Hence the mudroom in between the cellar and the rest of the house.

He gave a thoughtful hum and continued to creep further into the house, peeking into the next room from around the doorway. No sound. No movement. He breathed a sigh of relief and padded softly into the kitchen, going through the cabinets. He found two cans of ravioli that looked to be safe to eat, a box of assorted plastic silverware, and some bottles of water. Seeing as he’d already gone through quite a few of his own bottles, finding some here was some sort of blessing.

He also found that this place still had electricity and running water through some small miracle, so he was quick to plug in his phone (which was at about 14%) and wash his face in the kitchen sink.

He also raided the fridge and freezer and was quite delighted to find there was still food. Obviously the family had had the sense to abandon anything perishable and only take canned foods.

His raid of the freezer netted him a couple TV dinners that he may or may not have eaten in quick succession. It felt good to have his stomach full once more. It also felt good to drink a soda again, which he mostly did because the taste of water was getting pretty old already.

Once the bottle of soda was empty (which didn’t take long), he filled it with tap water because why the hell not? Soda bottles made way less noise than water bottles anyway. It was a good plan and he’d have to remember to do it as often as possible. If all else failed he could at least hold onto this soda bottle and occasionally dump a water bottle’s contents into it for when he needed to be really quiet.

He ruminated on why water bottles had to crinkle so damn much as he took another look around the house, searching for other things he could feasibly take and use. The first thing he found was a machete hidden under a bed, and to be honest the fact that it had been left behind was probably an oversight. He took it and its sheath and eventually found a way to secure it to his pants where it dangled below his chef’s knife. Thankfully neither made too much noise.

A final check of the house brought up nothing he’d need except for a small sewing kit that was already half-empty. It would certainly work, though. He wasn’t great at sewing, but he could manage it in a pinch. And, in a pinch, the remaining little coils of thread should be enough to serve him well.

He locked the front door behind him as he left.

 

* * *

 

The next place he ended up looting was a little abandoned gas station between cities. He didn’t like the idea of stealing from an actual business, but it obviously wouldn’t be seeing any paying customers for a long time. All he managed to get from the place were a couple packs of beef jerky and some candies and not much else… It would work, though. Sure, the candy wasn’t exactly great for him or his health, but the sugar was appreciated by his fatigued body when he finally settled down in a deserted spot and scarfed down half a pack of cherry sours. Within half an hour he had stopped shaking from the low blood sugar. He made a point of saving the rest of the packs of candy he’d picked up for emergencies. Low blood sugar wasn’t something he’d deal with often if he managed to eat three times a day, but understandably that wasn’t always possible… And, also understandably, he was burning way more calories than he was taking in and items that were essentially sugar would be a good emergency booster… Or something like that. He wasn’t a health professional or anything.

 

* * *

 

After that, he raided a convenience store about a week and a half into his journey. He partially refilled his stocks of water bottles and canned pasta with what he could get from the store shelves, then grabbed a few more things of candy because no one else was taking them, evidently. All the better for him.

 

* * *

 

Three days after that he came upon a little hotel with a solar panel on the roof. He crept around the property, listening for the undead, but heard none. So he kicked in one of the room doors and ended up camping there for the night after he shoved the dresser in front of the broken door. He had a shower once he realized there was running water and washed his clothes in the bathtub afterwards. He didn’t know nor did he care how this place still had running water. He just preoccupied himself with hanging his clothes up to dry and passing out in an actual bed for the first time since this had started.

He slept in on accident, and although it made him cringe he didn’t let it bother him too much. His body needed the rest and he knew it.

He ate, unplugged his phone and the portable charger, and then he was off.

 

* * *

 

On the third week of his journey, he came face to face with a zombie once more. He turned a corner and walked right into the fucker, having not been listening very closely. Typically they made much more noise, but… This one had been standing still - a rare occurrence.

As the zombie began to “wake up,” in a manner of speaking, he jolted backwards and fumbled for his bat. The thing stumbled toward him, arms outstretched to grab him and pull him in so it could bite him. Adrenaline pushed him to side-step it and let it move past him as he finally freed his bat from the makeshift “holster” he’d made for it out of a bedsheet from the hotel about a week prior.

There was no hesitation when he brought the bat down hard upon the stumbling zombie’s head. Its knees buckled, sending it crashing to the ground. And he was over its back in an instant, bringing the bat down again. It stopped writhing around almost instantly, but he hardly noticed.

He brought the bat down again. And again. And again. And again and again and again until its head was little more than a pile of mush beneath him. He forced his arms to stop. Forced himself not to bring the bat down again. The thing was long-dead. He knew that.

He quietly slid the bat back into its makeshift holster and stepped away from the now slain beast.

_[Christ, did you really have to do it like THAT?]_ A voice he recognized sounded in his head. This was pretty normal lately - he had to keep himself entertained, after all, so he kept some imaginary versions of his internet friends around in his head.

_Probably not,_ he admitted mentally since replying out loud was rarely an option, _I probably could have stopped after the second swing. But I panicked, man!_

He turned and picked his way carefully away from the corpse.

**_{That was brutal.}_ ** A second voice informed him. **_{Don’t tell me you’ll be doing that every time you have to kill a zombie.}_ **

He rolled his eyes, _You say that like I can just make myself not panic when I walk right into a zombie._

Neither of them chose to justify that with a response, for which he was somewhat grateful. Sure, he loved talking to these imaginary versions of Dave and Minx, but arguing with them he didn’t enjoy near as much. Partially because he just didn’t like arguing in general, and partially because, seriously, if he couldn’t even avoid arguing with himself just because he’d made the thoughts sound like his friends speaking to him, there was something wrong.

Not that there wasn’t already something wrong with talking to imaginary people in his head just to occupy himself, but whatever.

 

* * *

 

He soon got much better at taking things from stores without feeling bad about it. He kept his stocks of water filled up the best he could, but as canned food options dwindled he found himself having to steal more and more meal-replacement shakes and jars of peanut butter. That wasn’t to say there were no more cans of food available, it was just… A lot of it was either something he couldn’t stomach or something that didn’t have enough nutritional value for him to bother with unless he was just going to eat it right there in the store… Which he did fairly often, actually.

Honestly, days when he found a surplus of canned fruit with little to no nutritional value on their own were basically cheat days. The rationed amount of food he was able to eat otherwise was a diet in and of itself, and any good diet needed a cheat day.

**_{You just want an excuse to stuff yourself every once in a while.}_ ** Imaginary Minx teased one day while he sat on the store floor eating his fourth can of fruit in light syrup.

_Well you’re not wrong._ He conceded, tipping the can back to drink the remaining syrup. _But can you blame me?_

**_{In this situation? No. You need all the extra food you can get.}_ **

_[Even if those canned strawberries don’t have many calories in them.]_ Dave made note, yet again, of the lack of nutritional value in his choice of binge food. _[Although they DO have plenty of sugars, which is good for you sometimes.]_

He just snorted mentally and stood, carefully discarding the cans he’d eaten from. He then went back to searching the store, licking his lips under the bandana he’d pulled back over his mouth. Under normal circumstances, he’d hum to himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it now. So he settled for singing off-key in his head with Dave and Minx.

When he got back near the counter, he saw something that made him grin: a couple of portable chargers, untouched by anyone at all, and countless USB charging cables in various colors.

He didn’t hesitate to grab the chargers and a handful of cables, just in case he lost a couple of them later, stuffing them into the open spaces in his duffel bag. He grabbed a car charger, too. He went behind the counter, then, chewing at his lip. He didn’t know what, if anything, he was actually looking for, but he knew he didn’t have much time left to meander around like this. The sun would be going down in a couple of hours and he needed to make some more progress before then - he wouldn’t be caught dead sleeping in a store, mostly because he didn’t trust anyone or anything to find him while he was asleep. Especially not in a place like this.

All to be found back there were a couple of small flashlights and the silent alarm button. He snagged the flashlights on instinct.

He vacated the store.

 

* * *

 

In the time between store raids, he also got better at dispatching zombies. He got _much_ better at not going overboard. Two solid thumps to the top of the head or the temple with his bat took them down pretty easily. Sometimes three hits were necessary, and sometimes only one. Two was the lucky number, though.

He went out of his way to practice, he’d admit, picking off lone zombies whenever he could with the bat. A few times he went after them with his machete, instead, and found that in a pinch he definitely preferred it. One hard swing buried the blade far enough in a zombie’s head to kill it instantly… But it was also considerably bloodier, that way. The bat could kill off a zombie without too much gore if he was careful, but the machete splattered blood regardless of how “careful” he was.

On one occasion, he used the chef’s knife to kill a zombie, but only once. He jammed the blade through the thing’s eyeball and into its brain.

He never did it again because it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen or done, and cleaning the knife was not fun.

 

* * *

 

He found, eventually, that zombies, along with being blind and unable to smell, were really, _really_ stupid… But they didn’t under any circumstances attack each other. Ever. They didn’t seem to know for sure if something around them was a fellow, though. It seemed that anything that walked near them without making too much noise went unnoticed by them. And as long as nothing slammed directly into them, they didn’t seem to notice or mind being pushed around a little bit.

Like the idiot he was sometimes, he decided to test his hypothesis one day. There were a lot of zombies meandering down the street, essentially blocking his path, potentially for quite a long period of time. And, despite having no goal in mind, no place to go, he didn’t have that kind of time on his hands. He couldn’t afford to let them block his way.

So, yeah. He decided to test his hypothesis by shouldering his bag, taking a deep, steady breath, and walking headlong into the group. He brushed past the first couple zombies, heart hammering in his chest, but kept his breathing as even as he could and just kept walking. One of the zombies next to him gave a groan that damn near stopped him dead in his tracks. He only kept walking from sheer force of will, ready to bolt if need be despite being in the middle of a teeming mass of the undead.

He was thankful for his bandana for keeping the stench of death out of his nose.

The zombie, apparently, was just complaining, though. Nothing came of its groan. He managed to push forward, making his way to the front of the group. He gently nudged the tightly packed line of zombies holding the front out of his way. Once there was a large enough opening, he eased his way out of the swarm and tried to put some distance between it and him.

And all without being bitten or alerting the hoard.

He breathed a silent sigh of relief and kept moving.

_[That was stupid.]_ Dave informed him.

**_{Totally idiotic.}_ ** Minx agreed.

_It worked, though._ He reminded them.

**You almost got yourself** **_killed_** **, though.** Pewdie’s voice was rare, but right now he needed the familiarity. Even if they hadn’t been close recently, Pewdie was still one of his best friends.

Not that he needed the guy to tell him how stupid he was being.

_Don’t worry ‘bout it, Pewds._

All three of the imaginary versions of his friends groaned at him. He grinned sheepishly beneath his bandana and kept walking. They went silent and all the noise there was was the quiet sound of his shoes tapping on the pavement. He wetted his lips with his tongue and looked around for more zombies and, finding none, was quick to vacate the area.

 

* * *

 

It should also be noted that, at some point, he learned how to pick locks, and that skill turned out to be invaluable for him.

 

* * *

 

It had been about a month and three weeks (give or take a couple days) when he finally stumbled across another hotel. Or, rather, another hotel with solar panels and, presumably, running water. He’d come across plenty of hotels without either of those amenities, so this one was a long time coming. His phone had been dead for a while, too, so this would be a good chance to charge it and his three chargers and attempt to be on his way again.

A quick look at the state of his clothes told him he might want to wash them (and himself, damn) if there did happen to be running water.

He identified a room at random and picked the lock, carefully pushing the door open and peeking inside. Empty, from what he could see. He listened carefully for a long moment - no noise. _Completely_ empty, then.

Good.

He slid in and flicked on the lights, delighted that the solar panels actually still provided the place with power. The door clicked shut behind him and he took a quick look around. Seemed he’d managed to snag a Queen room… Hella. Queen rooms were awesome. Had plenty of amenities he could use, like the microwave.

He unplugged some things that didn’t need to be plugged in wasting the power, and then plugged in his phone and one of the portable chargers. He didn’t do much more looking around for the time being, instead checking to see if the hotel still had running water.

The sink worked, so it seemed that way.

Today was just his lucky day all around, wasn’t it?

He shut off the sink and decided to take another look around both inside the room and out. The closer examination he did of the room made him damn near smack himself at the sight of the washer and dryer tucked into an alcove, right in plain sight. His eyes had skipped right over them… Though that was probably because he’d been looking for threats, not luxuries.

Not that the dryer didn’t probably qualify as a threat considering how loud they could be, but, you know. Technicalities.

He dropped his duffel bag out of sight beside the large, inviting bed, and valiantly resisted the urge to lie down _right_ that second. For the first time in a while, he left his duffel bag behind, edging toward the door of the room. He kept his hand poised to grab his bat or his machete as he slipped out of the relative safety of the hotel room.

The hotel grounds were eerie even in the daylight - though he supposed that the same could be said of the majority of the places he’d been to in the past month and a half. He guessed he just never took the time to notice before.

He crept carefully around the buildings, keeping his ears open for the sounds of the undead. For the most part he heard nothing, but he wasn’t sure he was willing to chance anything regardless.

The hotel had a gift shop, though, and he was quick to pick the locks on the doors standing in his way to get in there. Who knew what he’d be able to find in there? At the very least he could probably find a new shirt or something. Maybe something a little darker colored? He’d been wearing this poor, poor white shirt since this shit started and it… Well, it wasn’t exactly white anymore. It was closer to being a gross reddish brown with the occasional white patch. It was hardly even a shirt, anymore, with how many holes he’d managed to put into it, somehow without putting any in his jacket.

Truly it was the epitome of attractive.

He snorted out loud at that thought, carefully picking his way into the gift shop and heading straight for the clothes racks. It was pretty obvious this place hadn’t been looted yet, he noted, because not only had the door still been locked, but everything within was still there.

He snagged the first dark colored shirt that he could find in the semi-darkness of the hotel interior, unwilling to turn on the lights just so he could clothes shop. Quickly clicking on his flashlight and hiding behind the clothes rack, he examined the shirt. It was a dark green fabric with the words “Rose Valley Hotel” in black text. A red rose sat blooming behind the words. The colors clashed a little bit, but fashion was the least of his concerns right now.

Still, he checked the shade of green against his dark blue jacket out of habit and, finding them to be compatible, took the shirt. He also checked around for pants, but found none. There was a large selection of bandanas, though. He could do with having a couple more of those, for the sake of using them as makeshift bandages or patches for his pants, because his pants were getting kind of beaten up. They were ripped and torn in various spots, with rather significant holes forming up on his thighs.

It sucked, honestly, because he’d really liked these pants.

He grabbed about half the bandanas and shoved them into his jacket pockets. He threw the shirt over his shoulder for the time being, and then he was on the hunt for anything he could eat.

Aside from some chocolate, there wasn’t anything that was still a viable option. So he just grabbed the water bottles he found and temporarily wrapped them in the shirt. He found some canteens while he was searching, too, and he decided he might as well grab one. He already had his reused soda bottle that he used for water while he was walking, but a canteen was even better.

He was about to leave when he decided, on second thought, he should probably grab another one. Or two. You know, just in case.

They weren’t enormous or clunky, so he figured he could probably get by with taking three with him. And, you know, he might find a companion (or companions!) later on, and they might need a canteen. Maybe they weren’t as well prepared as him, but stayed alive from sheer force of will.

Man, that was a nice thought. He kinda wanted to see a living person again after over a month and a half of not seeing any. The last living folks he’d seen were that family vacating their house before he got his machete. Seeing and talking to someone in person was sounding more and more like a blessing every single day, and he really wasn’t much of a people person in real life.

He wondered if he’d come across anybody that he actually knew.

Nah, probably not. Most of his YouTube buddies either lived on the other side of the country or out of the country entirely. Mark was in LA, for fuck’s sake. And everybody else? He had no clue, at the moment. For all he knew Pewdie was in Sweden. Or Britain. Or Italy. And Russ was… Who knew where Russ was, honestly.

He wondered, as he quickly made his way back across the hotel grounds to the room he’d picked, if any of his friends were thinking about him right now. Or if any of them were actually involved in this shit and worrying about him like he tended to worry about Mark and Russ. If Pewdie was out of the country, which he most likely was, he probably wasn’t involved in this, and he didn’t feel the need to worry about him. Same thing with Minx and Dave.

But he still couldn’t help wondering if Pewdie was worrying about him. If Dave and Minx were worried about him. At the very least he knew Russ and Mark would be - they’d know this shit was going down, so they’d have grounds to worry. Pewdie and the others might not even know this was happening, and since he had a tendency to disappear sometimes anyway they might not even think anything was wrong.

He winced at the thought, depositing his spoils onto the bed for now.

He headed back out, exploring a little more. Soon enough he found the source of the hotel’s water - a water tower, about half the size of a typical one, meaning it was still pretty huge. There was also another water tower supplying the town, he knew, but it was far off and by now it was probably empty if there were any survivors.

He carefully climbed the ladder up to the actual tank. Presumably it would be full, or at least half-full, but he wanted to be sure. Though… He really wasn’t sure how he’d do that. Surely if it was full opening the door up there wasn’t an option. Maybe he could just… Hit it and see if it sounded hollow?

Yeah.

He did that, and the resounding vibration and the subtle humming that came from it made him assume it was probably mostly full. Metal usually clanged and echoed if it was empty and you did that.

He nodded to himself, but decided he’d still limit his usage of the water as much as he could. There was no reason for him to use any more water than he needed to.

He had to psych himself up to climb back down, because hooooooly _shit_ he was a long way up, _hello._

Heights weren’t usually much of a concern for him, but that was mostly because he didn’t go out of his way to climb things like this. Not to mention, falling could be disastrous for him at the moment. Normally he’d be able to call an ambulance and get to the hospital if the fall didn’t kill him, but considering this was an apocalypse and there were literal zombies everywhere, he’d be pretty fucked if he broke his legs or something.

He made it back down without incident, but he was still a little shaky in the legs on his way back to his room. He’d have to remember not to do that shit any more often than he had to.

When he arrived back in the room, he stripped off his jacket and emptied the pockets before depositing the thing in the washing machine. His shirt, however, he shoved into the trash can. He kicked off his shoes, peeled off his socks, and then shucked his pants and underwear. He threw all of those things, sans his shoes, into the washing machine as well. Finally, he untied his bandana as an afterthought and deposited it into the washer as well. He left it standing open for the time being - he might decide to throw something else in there. Like maybe his towel after he’s done showering.

He decided he’d do that, now, and made his way to the bathroom.

He kept the shower fairly short. Scrubbing all the dirt and blood away from his skin took the most effort and the most time, but when he was done he’d admit to standing there for a while under the hot spray, letting it relax his muscles.

He toweled himself off when he was done and shut off the lights in the bathroom before moving back to the main hotel room. He did, indeed, toss his towel into the washer. After rooting around the room a little and finding no detergent he shrugged and started the washer without it.

He plopped onto the bed to wait, checking on his phone soon afterwards.

No service, still, but almost fully charged. The hotel wifi was available, but required a password. He cringed only to remember he’d seen the password in the lobby. Oh. This was a fortuitous day indeed.

He typed in the password and was rewarded with an almost instant internet connection with full bars.

Now to see if it would actually work…

YouTube loaded without a hitch, and he found himself breathing a little faster. Holy _shit_ he _absolutely_ needed to camp out here for a while. He’d also need to record a quick update video, he was sure, because as he sat there his email flooded with comments on his videos, likely wondering where he went and if he was okay. He could manage that, he thought.

He swallowed and prepped himself for it as he opened the camera app. He pointed the camera at the bedsheets.

“Hey.” He said after he started recording, and damn was his voice sounding _bad._ It was pretty obvious how little he’d been talking. “I’m sure you guys have been wondering where I went, or if I’m okay, or whatever.” The significant rasp didn’t fade at all and he resigned himself to having to have it for now. “So while I have internet I thought I’d go ahead and update you guys on stuff.

“First off, I’m okay. Kinda. I guess. I’m alive, is what I mean. I’m in a hotel about a two month walk from my hometown.” He laughed ruefully, “Place has solar panels, which is probably the only reason it even has power in the first place. Couldn’t possibly tell ya how it has internet. Lord knows the bill aint been paid.” A sigh. “I’m lucky, I guess, to still be alive at this point. I dunno how much you guys know about the mess America’s in right now, but it’s _bad._ Like _really_ bad. This is the first time I’ve gotten to stop walking for more than twenty minutes without going to sleep in a week, because I _have_ to keep moving.

“Think I’m gonna stay here for a little while longer, though. Maybe hunker down for a couple days, build up some energy - that sort of thing. But as soon as that’s done I’ll have to get my ass on the road again and I have no clue when I’ll have access to the internet next. This might be the only time I get it again before I die… And I know that’s not what any of you want to hear. Just know that I don’t think I’m dying any time soon - I’m pretty good at this whole ‘surviving’ thing. I just dunno if I’ll have wifi again at any point in the next few years, which is kinda scary. Not having wifi means that the people I know and love don’t have access to me, and I don’t have access to them, and the last like two months have been horrifying because I can’t stop wondering if my friends are okay.

“And I’m worried about all of you guys, too, don’t get me wrong. But the people I’ve met in person… They take a higher level of priority, y’know? Not to mention I can only worry about so many people before it becomes too much.” He finally paused to take a breath. The rasp was finally going away just a bit. “Anyways. Yeah. I think I’m gonna stay here a couple days. Stick around and suck up as much wifi as I can… Maybe even check in on my friends if I can. For now I’m gonna go - I love you all, kay? See you when I see you.”

He stopped recording, then, taking another breath. He swallowed. God, he had a lot of feelings. So many feelings. About so many things. He didn’t think he’d ever actually told his fans he loved them before… He guessed now was as good a time as any to do it, though. They probably needed the reassurance.

He went about starting the upload process and laid the phone down to let it, you know, do that. He’d mess with details like the title and description here in a bit.

For the time being, he grabbed his new shirt and put it on just to feel a little less vulnerable, even if it only went to the tops of his thighs. He scrubbed at his glasses with the hem of the shirt, since he knew there wasn’t currently any blood on them. Just skin oil, eyelashes, and dirt.

He lounged around until the washer finished, then loaded the clothes into the dryer and started it. It wasn’t near as loud as he was expecting, for which he was grateful. Just because he hadn’t heard any undead earlier didn’t mean that there weren’t any around. Or that none had come wandering into the area since he locked himself into the room.

Thinking of that, he quickly went to actually _lock_ the door, then removed the TV from its stand and used the stand to barricade the door. Took some effort to move it, but he didn’t really plan on leaving the room for a couple days anyway. He also made sure to keep the curtains pulled as tight as he could get them, but he was sure there was still some light seeping through the green and red fabric.

He’d give anything for some black spraypaint, right about now. Or some staples.

He didn’t find staples on his next sweep of the room, but he did find an abandoned bottle of superglue that was still full. He didn’t even feel bad when he superglued the edges of the curtains to the wall. It wasn’t likely anybody would have to scrape the glue off anytime soon anyway, and he doubted that scraping superglue off the wall would be the worst of anybody’s problems when that time finally came. He actually did pretty minimal damage no matter where he went or what he did since he was keeping the eventual cleanup of the places he ransacked or temporarily hid out in in mind.

Knowing some light could still seep through from the tops and through the fabric, he removed the shower curtain, which was actually a green that was nearly black rather than the standard white, from the shower and, standing on a chair, superglued it over top of the curtains, blocking the top from letting too much light out and decreasing the amount that got through the original curtains.

It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, especially considering it limited his perception of the outside world for the time being, but it would do, and maybe it would convince any other survivors to leave well enough alone and not bother trying to loot him. Obviously he was ingenuitive enough to find a way to limit the amount of light leaving the room, so maybe they’d think he was ingenuitive enough to find ways to kill them without alerting the hoards.

He hoped so. Fighting other survivors really wasn’t high on his list of wants.

That done he got back on the bed and ate a quick dinner of canned pasta. He supplemented his sugar intake by eating some candies, then drained a water bottle in a few quick gulps. He was still hungry as hell, but nowhere near hungry enough to chance starving later just for the sake of having a little extra right now.

He picked up his phone and tapped in the details needed for the video. He titled it “Update”, and only wrote, “Love you guys. Stay safe.” in the description.

Vague as hell. Just the way he liked it.

He pressed the _Publish_ button and waited, going through the emails he had about comments. He had been right in assuming that most of them were people asking if he was okay or wondering why he hadn’t been posting recently. One or two of them were well-wishes from fans that seemed to be Americans as well.

_Nerdybirdy commented: Stay safe! Things are going to shit awful quick and I don’t wanna end up surviving this only to find out one of my favorite people didn’t make it through!_

He smiled slightly. He was tempted to reply, but it wasn’t likely that ‘Nerdybirdy’ would have access to the internet at the moment.

After a minute, he did it anyway, typing, _Doing my best. You stay safe, too. I can’t stomach the thought of any of my fans dying._

_PewdiecryTrash commented: Yo how weird is it that Mark, Jack, Pewds, Russ, AND our homeboi all stopped posting out of nowhere at about the same time?_

That one made him wince. Not only because of the username, but also because of the implications toward Pewdie being in the states when this went down originally. He had all the respect in the world for Pewdie, he swore he did, but Pewdie… Pewdie wasn’t the kind of guy who was made to survive a zombie apocalypse. He was too hyperactive and loud. He’d get himself killed if he was in the states, unless he had someone around to remind him to shut his fucking mouth.

He winced again. That sounded harsh even just in his head.

… But it was true. Pewdie would need to be reminded pretty frequently to stay quiet, at least in the beginning. He’d pick up on it eventually, though, and stop talking so much, which would make his life (and the life of whoever was traveling with him) much easier.

He chose not to respond to that one, but he also didn’t go out of his way to delete it. It could stay, for now, because, based on the replies it already had, it was fostering some serious critical thinking skills in his out-of-country fans.

Within fifteen minutes of his video officially publishing itself, he’d already gotten comments.

The first was, blessedly, from Dave.

Predictably, the basic gist of the comment was, “Good to see you’re still alive, don’t die, message me.”

He messaged him.

They talked for a while. Dave headed off to do whatever it was he normally did when it started to get late. He went back to reading the comments on his video. There were about twenty from regular fans, Dave’s, and one from Minx. Her comment was basically the same as Dave’s.

He messaged her, too.

Their conversation lasted much longer than his and Dave’s had by virtue of Minx being really really invested in the conversation and insistent on him having some interaction after two months of isolation.

“Total isolation isn’t good for you,” was something she had to say about it. It was followed by the fairly well-known fact that people tended to go insane from it… Not that he really needed to be convinced to keep talking. He’d missed the hell out of Dave and Minx, and he was intending to fully exploit this chance to talk to them as much as he could before he had to totally isolate himself again because his phone refused to have service. He was sure it was just because the bill hadn’t been paid, at this point, but who knew? Maybe he was just having shit luck with cell towers.

Either way he wouldn’t be doing a whole lot of talking to anybody once his brief vacation in the hotel was over with.

He talked with Minx until the dryer finished running, at which point he decided to call it a night and head to bed. He pulled on his underwear and folded himself into bed, told Minx he was going to go to sleep, and placed one of the other portable chargers on the charging cord.

Minx asked him if it wasn’t a little early to be sleeping. He replied that he had a tendency of going to bed as soon after the sun went down as he could manage, lately, for the sake of being able to stay awake during the day. She accepted the answer and bid him goodnight. He returned the sentiment.

It was only seven, but he hadn’t been lying. Sleep was important if he wanted to stay up during the time he was usually more comfortable sleeping.

So he shut off the lights and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

 

He talked to Dave and Minx a lot in the following days.

He felt just a little bit better.

 

* * *

 

All good things must come to an end, and the same was true now, so after refilling his old water bottles, filling up the canteens he’d stolen, and patching his jeans with bandana scraps while he waited for his phone to finish charging again, he donned his jacket and shoved the TV stand out of the way of the door and exited the hotel room.

He didn’t look back, because if he looked back he’d want to _go_ back. He couldn’t do that. So he kept walking, eyes straight ahead while still managing to examine the road for debris that might trip him.

It had, officially, been two months since this started.

And now he was back where he began, following quietly behind a large group of zombies, thinking about the past. It had been one hell of a ride, so far. And he’d survived.

But now that he was alone again after three or four days of having contact with two of his best friends, he got to thinking about something else. He got to thinking, as he followed the zombie hoard, that he hadn’t been able to make much noise in the past two months. There’d been evidence of that when he tried to record his update video. The rasp in his voice wasn’t there from yelling - it was there from total disuse. He hadn’t so much as hummed or made a noise while yawning since the second night of his journey.

And then he’d recorded a three minute long video where he did nothing but talk.

His throat hadn’t liked that, and he’d gone back to being silent almost immediately afterwards.

It was _weird._

The hoard of zombies took a turn. He turned the opposite direction and kept walking.

_[Not going to go with the flow?]_

_Not today._

He licked his lips to wet them under his bandana, checking on the hoard over his shoulder rather obsessively until he could no longer see it. Then he found himself throwing glances around in every direction, toward any sound at all. Even sounds he knew to be benign made his head snap toward them. He was deeply on edge and there was absolutely nothing to be done about it because being on edge would likely be the thing that kept him alive through all of this provided he didn’t meet any other travelers.

Come nightfall he hadn’t found anywhere decent to sleep, so he plopped his bag down on the side of the road, ate, and then curled up using the bag as a pillow. It was his first night out in the open, with no cover, since the beginning. He’d had a night back then when he’d stayed up against a house, but that was it.

 

* * *

 

He woke in the morning without incident, although there was a zombie stumbling closer to his temporary camp. He supposed he’d made some sort of noise to attract it, but that was fine.

A very solid thump with the bat and it went down like a sack of potatoes. It did not so much as twitch. He laughed, internally, because he was honestly getting _way_ too good at this. It was starting to feel like a video game he’d beaten a few times - familiar and easy and something that he shouldn’t spend as much time on as he did.

Oh well.

Much like video games in general once were… This was kind of his life now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, just for the record, Real Person Fiction isn't usually my cup of tea, and this is my first time actually writing anything more than a quick little oneshot for my own enjoyment involving any of the 'Tubers. Their characters here will be based mostly around what I _feel_ like they project as themselves. And I'm gonna come right out and say that I actively avoid watching a lot of Pewds' stuff from any time in the past couple years in order to preserve the admiration I had for him in the past. Even if he hadn't done some of the... Problematic... Things that he's done in the past couple years, I'm still not a huge fan of what he's doing with himself now because it just doesn't feel like Pewdiepie anymore - so this version of him is being written based on the way he acted back when I still loved the channel. Just thought I'd get that out there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so this chapter was _supposed_ to go up in June, but it completely slipped my mind to post it. Seeing as very few people read it at this point, however, I'm not particularly worried.  
>  Anyways, enjoy, and be sure to leave a comment if you like it or if you see something horribly wrong with the chapter (huge formatting issues, spelling/grammar errors, continuity errors, etc...)

` **August 20XX** `

This really wasn’t on Sean’s list of things that he particularly wanted to deal with today, but he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, did he? For the past two and a half months this had been his life, and even though he was starting to get used to it it was still doing funny things to his head. And his stomach.

He avoided giving into the urge to vomit by biting down on his bottom lip as hard as he could.

He guessed it was his own fault that he was in this particular situation, though, because it was kind of _his_ decision to just meander into an abandoned house without making sure it was really abandoned before he opened the door. He knew he should have checked first, but he was getting rather desperate for shelter as the sun sank further and further below the horizon.

He’d popped the door open, seen zombies inhabiting most of the rooms except this little utility room off the side of the kitchen, and made a break for the room. His footsteps and his backpack had alerted the nearby undead to his presence, of course, but he’d managed to get into the utility room and slam the door shut without getting caught out by any of the bastards. It had been close, though. Far too close for comfort.

He shoved a nearby box against the door, then stacked a couple more on top of it. It may not stop the zombies from getting into the room, but it would at the very least slow them down and alert him to what was happening.

He found a corner to curl up in and did so, quickly scarfing down a granola bar and taking a swig of his water. He had a good deal of provisions, admittedly, from a rather recent raid, but he was trying to preserve his stocks. He’d been hoping he could raid this house’s pantry, too, but that hope was a little more than dashed if he was being honest. He was willing to do a lot of things to get food and water, but fighting through a sea of zombies to get to it was not one of them.

He was pretty hungry from rationing, but he wasn’t stupid.

The shuffling outside the door died down some, and a glance out of the nearby window showed the sun was down now. He winced and pulled his jacket tighter around himself, getting as comfortable as he could given the fact that he was lying on a cold linoleum floor.

… How did it come to this, anyway? He wondered about it as he drifted off to sleep.

 

* * *

 

In retrospect, it was pretty obvious what was happening the day that it started.

But, hey, hindsight _did_ tend to be 20/20, didn’t it? So, sure it was obvious _now,_ two months later, but back then he’d been under the assumption that the world _wasn’t_ turning into a video game. When he’d seen the report about the riot a little further south in Florida, where he was at a con, he’d figured it was just a bunch of angry folks doing the thing angry folks did best - fighting each other.

So he’d left it alone, gone to sleep, and woken up to someone banging on his door. He’d been intelligent enough, blessedly, to check through the peephole before he opened it. It saved him from suffering the same fate as the poor bastard on the other side, at the very least.

When he’d checked through the peephole, he’d noticed that the man banging on his door had a huge, gaping hole in the side of his head, and his eyes were milky white. And he wasn’t knocking so much as he was slamming his hands against the wood that was in his way, trying his best to get into the room. Jack had little doubt that it had heard him make some sort of noise while he was asleep and had decided to come after the nearest possible source of food.

He backed away from the door as slowly and quietly as he possibly could, thinking that, surely, this was some sort of nightmare, and he was going to wake up any second.

He did not wake up.

He pinched his arm as hard as he could.

He did not wake up.

He sat down on the other side of the hotel room, pulled his knees to his chest, and breathed as slow and deep as he could. Okay. This wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was a prank? He’d seen some pretty good gore special effects before, maybe that was all this was. And white-out contacts existed, too, so that explained that.

Yeah.

Totally.

This was totally just a prank being pulled on him by somebody he didn’t even fucking know. That made total sense. Complete and total sense and he _definitely_ wasn’t just trying to write off a real life zombie as a prank to avoid a panic attack of some sort. He didn’t really _have_ panic attacks, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever had one before, but he was fairly sure that whatever _this_ was qualified. He was terrified out of his wits, seconds away from hyperventilating, and he was _thought_ he might be crying. He wasn’t sure.

The world around him was blurry, but that could be the sleep clinging to his eyes just as easily as it could be tears. He guessed he’d just figure it out when it became relevant.

Eventually the thumping on the door stopped and he could hear the zombie shuffle away, interest in the room lost for the time being. He took a few more minutes to try and calm down. When he wiped his eyes to clear away the blurriness, he found that he had, indeed, been crying. Dammit. He’d have to work on that, probably. Crying couldn’t possibly be a good idea for him given his current situation.

He slowly stood and checked out the room window, examining the streets below him. They looked fairly abandoned. A car had been left with its door open near the hotel’s front door. Closer examination showed the car he’d rented at the airport sitting untouched in the hotel parking lot. Awesome.

He grabbed his backpack from where he’d sat it down when he entered the hotel room initially, dumping out the current contents to sort through them. A jacket, a couple bottles of water, a box of cheap-ish granola bars… And of course some of his clothes. He hummed, considering the items for a moment. He sat the water and granola bars off to the side and looked around for other provisions.

He ended up raiding the mini fridge for all the alcohol and water it had.

The room didn’t have a whole lot else to offer, unfortunately. So he dug a few of his empty water bottles out of the trash, knowing that he hadn’t thrown anything in there with them that would make them unsanitary, and he filled them up at the bathroom sink.

With that he stuffed what would fit into his backpack, which amounted to three miniature bottles of Scotch, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a few miniature bottles of vodka, his box of granola bars, and a grand total of 11 water bottles. He considered this for a long moment before he threw in a couple pairs of his pants and a couple shirts. If nothing else they would be able to muffle the sounds of his supplies.

At least he hoped so.

He quietly crept to the door as he shouldered the backpack, listening carefully. Slowly the lock was turned, then the door knob. The door opened a fraction, thankfully silent. He peeked out into the hall, still listening, and found it to be empty and quiet. He could hear the zombie in the distance, however.

He cringed slightly but quietly made his way out of the room. If he was lucky, the white, unblinking eyes of the zombie were a sign that it was blind. And maybe all the others were, too.

Them being blind would be a blessing because even if he wasn’t great at being quiet, it was easier than trying to be invisible. He wasn’t a ninja. He was just a guy who occasionally worked out and posted at least one gaming video a day on YouTube. He was a regular dude and he was loud and this really wasn’t what he was expecting to happen when he came to America for a con on his own. Maybe a couple not so great run-ins with fans, some forgettable moments sitting in a hotel, and certainly drinking up as much low quality hotel alcohol as he could bring himself to, but past that? He hadn’t been expecting much.

He shook his head and snuck as quietly as he could down to the lobby of the hotel.

The front doors stood open, and idling near them was a zombie, looking directly at him but not advancing. He could only tell it was a zombie by the disgusting flapping skin of its neck and the thick, drying blood that dripped in globs from the wound there. He waved a hand, feeling sick, and when it didn’t move to come at him, he breathed a sigh of relief. He pressed his hand to his stomach, pressed his lips together, and took a deep breath.

Okay. He could do this.

He just had to get the zombie away from the door and then he could leave without fearing for his life, for the most part.

How could he do that?

He looked around for anything he could use as a distraction. There was a water bottle on the front desk, but not much else. He sighed and picked it up, cringing at the crinkling noise it made. The zombie didn’t move toward him, so maybe its hearing wasn’t so great either? He wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He drew his arm back and flung the bottle toward one of the side doors. It hit the ground with a loud crunch and a thump. The zombie’s head snapped toward the noise, and it quickly went to investigate, shambling and tripping itself as it went.

The moment it was far enough out of his way for him to feel safe, Jack went for the front door.

As much as he wanted to bolt, he didn’t. He knew running made a lot of noise. Stealth games and real life experience could tell him that easily enough. So he moved briskly, but not as fast as he would have liked, pausing frequently to be sure that he hadn’t attracted the zombie’s attention.

It was still investigating the place where the water bottle had landed, making little groans and growls in the back of its throat.

He made it through the front doors at last. A glance around showed no zombies on the streets that he could see. His car was still across the street, within range. His keys were in his pocket (he was glad he’d remembered to grab them).

Okay, he could do this.

He made a break for it. Got across the street without incident. He pressed the little unlock button on the keychain and he was in the car before anything else had the chance to happen. He threw his bag into the passenger’s seat rather unceremoniously and tried to keep his hand steady as he put the key in the ignition. Okay. This was going to be loud. He’d have to hope and pray for the best.

He started the car, engine significantly quieter than some of the other cars he’d driven. He was thankful, because a quieter engine meant he was less likely to attract the hoard.

He stalled there in the parking spot for a long moment to see if he’d attracted anything yet. Nothing.

Awesome.

He sped out of the parking lot and down the street about as fast as he could. As soon as he got to one of the main roads leading out of town, he realized there was a serious flaw in his plan to get as far away as he could in as short an amount of time as possible.

And that flaw was that _everyone else with any sense was doing the exact same thing._

He made a noise something like the vocal equivalent of a shudder and swiftly performed a U-turn, heading back into town and seeking out any back roads he could find. Two or three of them were just as busy as the main road, but he finally found a rather desolate one, and that was the one he set off on. He considered, during all that, that the maneuver he’d pulled - the sudden U-turn - had some sort of slang name that he couldn’t remember. Maybe he could ask Mark?

But now wasn’t the time for that, was it?

Hell, he needed to message Mark, anyway, though. Just to see if he was okay. See if this was _just_ a Florida thing.

He dug for his phone in his pockets and opened his messaging app.

He shot a quick “you okay?” at Mark and hoped for the best. His heart sank when it failed to send. He tried to send it again, and, again, it failed. He swallowed down the growing lump in his throat. Maybe there was just bad signal out here.

He’d try again when he got to the next town.

 

* * *

 

He did, indeed, try again when he got to the next town. He even turned on airplane mode, and then turned it off before he tried… But it still didn’t send, and he had to pinch himself as hard as he could to keep the tears from forming in his eyes. Crying wouldn’t help this situation and he knew it.

He considered the idea that, maybe, it was _Mark_ who didn’t have signal. He knew it was unlikely. He knew it wasn’t even technically a reasonable excuse for why _his_ messages weren’t _sending._ He tried to hold onto the vague hope, however, typing out a message to another friend.

The message didn’t send.

He tried to message Felix.

The message didn’t send.

He took a deep breath through clenched teeth and deposited his phone as calmly as he could into the passenger’s seat. He, admittedly, kind of wanted to scream. But that wouldn’t help him at all. In fact that would probably just make things worse.

So, for the time being, he drove up alongside a gas pump at the local gas station. Shockingly enough there was still someone working there - in fact, this town looked pretty much unaffected by what was happening. Maybe he could stay here until the zombies spread to the area…

He walked in and paid to fill up the gas tank, buying some provisions while he was there. Just some more water, some chips, and ziplock bags. He ended up buying a bag of ice as well, as just asking if there were any coolers around netted him one from the cashier.

“You’ll need it more than we probably will. We’re only runnin’ the store ‘til closin’ time tonight, anyways, then we’re hoppin’ on the first flight outa here.”

“The airports are still operational?”

“A few miles on up, yeah. You gonna try and catch a flight too?”

Jack considered it a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t want to add to the commotion, you know? There’s lotsa other people tryin’ t’get out. I’ll probably head out toward California, m’self.”

“Why California?” The man tilted his head, cocking an eyebrow.

“Got friends there.” Jack told him. “Maybe if I’m quick enough I can meet up with one of ‘em and we can get out together.”

“Good idea,” The cashier noted, “Very noble, too. Best of luck to you!”

“Best a’ luck to you too.”

He headed out with his spoils, filled up the gas tank, and began looking for somewhere to spend the night.

In the end he chose to climb into the back seat of the car and use his jacket as a blanket. He made sure all the doors were locked, got as comfortable as he could manage, and managed to sleep for most of the night. When he woke up, his phone claimed it was about four in the morning. He gave a sigh, but decided it was best to get moving now than to wait.

He just had to hope he could make it to California without using any of the big, clogged main roads.

He wasn’t sure if that was possible.

 

* * *

 

A month later and he still hadn’t managed to get out of Florida. Every road leading toward California, by his estimate, was still too clogged, but no longer with people trying to leave. Simply with abandoned or wrecked cars that he couldn’t get around. He didn’t want to abandon his car just yet. Somehow he’d managed to keep the gas tank mostly full, and so far he’d had the good fortune of always getting to stores to raid them before anyone else got there or had the idea to snatch anything more than a couple jugs of water.

People always got the chips first if he didn’t manage to beat everyone to the store. He knew chips had little to no nutritional value, but they were good for when he needed something to snack on. Not to mention family sized bags could almost replace a meal if he needed them to… And he occasionally needed them to.

For the time being, he was holed up in an abandoned motel. There was (astonishingly) still power and a little bit of running water. He used the water sparingly. The power he just used to charge his phone and keep a lamp on so he wasn’t sitting in the dark.

He recorded vlogs he’d probably never upload on his phone most days. Never anything terribly long, never anything explicitly detailing how lonely he was. He just talked for a few minutes and imagined that everything was normal.

It wasn’t hard when he was driving around on his own - he didn’t see very many zombies, most days. One or two wandering the main roads, here and there, maybe one running into the doors of a shop… But never the large crowds he would have expected. That was fine. The less of them he saw the better, honestly. The less of them he saw the less of them he had to imagine brutally murdering him.

Or vice versa.

He didn’t like the idea of killing a zombie in real life. In video games it was all well and good, but in real life… Well. In video games, even if that had been a person once, it wasn’t anymore and it was fictional besides. In real life… That had once been a _real_ person, with a _real_ family and _real_ hopes and dreams. That was a human person, no matter how rotted and crazed it was.

He didn’t get out of the car very often, and he got out of the motel room he’d commandeered even less.

Admittedly, he also used the power to run the air conditioning during the day, because it got damn near _boiling_ in that room without it and he’d probably die if he kept it off. But he ran it almost as sparingly as the water. Just enough to keep the room a vaguely comfortable temperature and no more. The settings on the thing had to be tinkered with to keep it running how he needed it, but whatever. It wasn’t like it was hard to turn on energy-saver mode and set the thermostat to 80 so it wouldn’t come on unless it was above that in the room.

He just had to hope his body was alright with the temperatures leading up to that. He couldn’t tell for sure unless he took a good look at himself. From what he could tell he wasn’t getting all red and blotchy, though, so it was likely he was okay.

After about two weeks stewing in the motel, he crept out and set off again.

It had been a month and a half since this started, and admittedly he was anxious to be around someone again. He was lonely. Lonelier than he’d been in a long, long time. When he was driving around he could at least pretend that there was a perfectly normal reason for no one to be texting him - he was on the road, after all. But when he was just sitting around in a hotel room doing his best not to become a steamed vegetable, it was hard to be okay with being utterly alone. It was hard to come up with a good explanation as to why no one at all was messaging him. Why he wasn’t even getting any spam emails.

Again. On the road, he could reason that he didn’t have signal, or that he had his phone on silent, or that it was dead and he didn’t have a car charger, all of which were valid arguments. It was much easier on his sanity that way - probably the majority of the _real_ reason he’d spent so much time driving instead of trying to find other survivors and settle down for a bit.

 

* * *

 

He spent another week or so managing to drive around and avoid anything untoward happening. However, at the end of that week, as he travelled down a dusty back road, his car at last ran out of gas. He cursed louder than was necessarily safe, took a moment to try and calm himself down, and after checking to be sure the coast was clear he exited the car, popping the trunk to check for the gas can he’d snagged several weeks earlier. As he suspected, however, it was just as empty as the tank was. He hadn’t remembered to fill it up the last time he’d made a gas stop.

_God_ he was an idiot.

He cursed again, much quieter, and resisted the urge to kick the back bumper out of frustration. He’d only end up hurting himself if he did that and that was the absolute _last_ thing he needed.

Grumbling, he gathered his things from the car, draping his jacket’s hood over his head to shield himself from the sun the best that he could and shrugging his backpack onto his shoulders. As an afterthought, he grabbed the gas can, too. The chances of it having seen the last of its usefulness were slim. There was potential for him to find a new car (and maybe the keys to it, so he wouldn’t have to make an attempt to hotwire it) and need to keep the gas can around for this exact situation. Except this time he’d have to remember to actually refill the gas can.

He headed down the road, mindful of the position of the sun. If he was lucky, he had another hour or two before the sun went down, and by then he could only hope that he’d have found shelter. He did _not_ under _any_ circumstances want to be stuck outside all night. It just seemed like a bad idea. Seemed dangerous, too. He knew already that zombies were more active at night - he’d been able to figure that out fairly early on.

He did not turn out to be as lucky as he might have hoped, as the sun began to sink below the horizon what he presumed to be about an hour later. Blessedly, just as he noticed the red tint to the sky, he noticed a farm house sitting a little up the road. He hastened toward it and then, suddenly hesitant, investigated the surrounding property.

When it proved to be at least _mostly_ abandoned, he made his way up to the house and, stupidly, knocked on the front door as loud as he could.

No response.

He did it again.

Not even a hint of movement.

He tried the door handle, and… Victory! It was unlocked.

He immediately made his way inside and, heedless of where would be safer, went straight for the couch to lay down. He dropped his stuff next to it, tested the softness with the palm of his hand, and gracelessly flopped onto it, pulling his jacket over him as a blanket. He knew by now that Florida could get pretty cold at night - he’d actually learned that some time prior to this whole mess.

Couldn’t exactly remember when…

Sleep came with only the expected amount of difficulty, and when he woke in the morning he went right to work checking around for food, since he was running rather low on supplies, admittedly.

To his eternal delight, the kitchen pantry contained several mason jars of fruit and other home-grown items, dated for just before all of this started going down. He gave a little cheer to himself because, hey, canned goods were always beneficial. Sure, he wasn’t entirely certain on how long home-canned goods stayed… Well… _Good,_ but theoretically two-ish months wasn’t long enough for them to have gone bad if they’d been canned and stored properly.

He ate full jar of apples for breakfast, then, upon finding a pack of water bottles under the sink, drank one.

He sighed in relief at having been able to eat and drink a little more than usual, then packed away what remained into his backpack. There was little else he could do here (although he supposed staying another night was an option), but he decided to explore the property a little to see if there was anything else he could take. Maybe some fresh produce, if he got lucky…

His mouth watered at the thought. He was getting awfully tired of canned food after what he _thought_ was about two months. He wasn’t sure. His phone battery wasn’t good enough for him to keep constant track, and as it had been at about 25% the last time that he turned it off (something like three days before the car ran out of gas) he wasn’t eager to turn it back on yet.

His adventuring around the property did, indeed, find him some fresh fruits. Not many, but enough to last him a few days. The apples were just this side of being overly ripe, as were the pears, but as they hadn’t quite reached it yet, he was going to go for it. And you could bet your bottom he’d be saving the seeds.

It was within a grove of fruit trees that he actually found the well.

With some trepidation he approached the open, uncovered well and peered down into the depths. To his surprise (and once more, his eternal delight), there was nothing floating in the water.

He found a bucket strung up on a low tree branch by a rather lengthy piece of rope, and when examining it proved there were no spiders on or in it, and it wasn’t full of dirt, he made his way back to the well and carefully lowered the bucket into the water. Once it was submerged, he slowly hauled it back out, setting it on the edge of the well. Then, to avoid losing it completely if he accidentally knocked it back into the well, he tied the end of the rope around one of his belt loops, knelt to get some of his empty water bottles out of his bag, and began to refill them via the bucket.

He also rinsed out and filled up the mason jar his canned apple breakfast had been in.

He explored a little bit more after stringing the bucket back up where he’d found it, and eventually decided to leave the farm behind, heading off down the road at about noon, jacket draped over his head to protect him from the sun.

 

* * *

 

Something like another week later, he at last stumbled upon a new town. It probably wouldn’t have taken nearly that long had he not accidentally gotten himself turned around by accident at one point and ended up back at the farm.

That was kind of embarrassing. He’d been paying attention to which way he was going, and he knew he was heading Southeast instead of Northwest due to the position of the sun first thing in the morning and right at sunset, but… Well, he hadn’t thought much of it. He just thought he’d ended up on a rather winding road that would eventually head northwest again if all went well. It wasn’t until he arrived back at the farmhouse a couple of days of little to no sleep later that he realized his mistake.

He went to bed on the couch again while he was there, searched the house again in the morning, and this time left with a couple of sleeping bags and a full kerosene oil lantern. It was a little metal blue thing that he kind of thought of as “cute” and appeared to be functional from what he could tell. And he had a lighter in his bag already, so at least there was that.

Anyway, after he’d headed off this time, he kept an eye on his direction and, eventually, made it into a new town. This town was, like most others, abandoned, but it appeared mostly untouched by anyone else. That was a blessing, in his opinion.

He quickly made his way to the nearest store, which happened to be a Walmart. The doors were shut and locked tight, as was to be expected, but he wouldn’t be deterred from the idea of food and shade that easily. He checked for nearby zombies, found none, picked up the biggest rock he could find, and flung it as hard as he could at one of the doors.

The door shattered with an almighty crash, and the rock landed heavily on the tile floor within. Jack stayed perfectly still for a moment, checking around him to see if he’d been heard. No one, living or dead, came to investigate the noise for several minutes, and eventually he took the point - no one was here. No one else was in this town.

He kicked out the larger pieces of glass that were still in his way, then picked his way across the shards into the little vestibule before the actual store doors to the rock. Just to be sure, he tried to shove open the inside doors too, pushing them sideways as hard as he could and trying to get his fingers between the doors to no avail.

Sighing, he stepped back, hauled up the rock again, and flung it through the inner doors as well. He again kicked out the larger shards of glass, then made his way inside.

Immediately the smell of rotting produce assaulted his nose and he gagged into his hand, grimacing to himself as he pulled the collar of his shirt up over his mouth and nose.

It was shockingly dark despite the skylights he knew were placed throughout the store, so he quietly lit his lantern and lifted it with the hand not keeping his shirt firmly over his nose.

Up until now, he’d only raided smaller, obscure, hometown type stores, which understandably had a much smaller selection of things to look into, especially concerning food and clothing items.

He made a beeline for what he knew to be the canned food and non-frozen microwave meal aisles, although he knew he didn’t have a microwave to use. He swiftly stuffed some canned pasta and canned vegetables into his backpack, followed by a few “microwave” rice bowls that, to his knowledge, were pre-cooked and only needed to be warmed up if you wanted hot rice.

He made his way through the aisles, picking up several other things, always mindful of the fact that his backpack wasn’t the biggest and he likely wouldn’t have room for everything he needed or wanted. He, at some point, grabbed several boxes of water flavoring packets and shoved them into the side pocket.

Hit with a sudden inspiration as his backpack began to reach max capacity, he abandoned it next to a shelf and took his lantern to go in search of a bigger backpack, since he knew for a fact Walmarts sold backpacks.

He managed to find one that looked to be considerably larger than his medium-sized one and immediately headed back to where he’d left his other one.

He quickly moved all of his stuff into the new backpack, delighted to find it was, indeed, much bigger and clearly meant for carrying a larger amount of things than his little travel backpack. He had a good deal of room left in this one, and though he knew it would turn out to be heavier this way, he was willing to work to stay fed and hydrated.

Additionally, he was loathe to abandon his little backpack completely, so that would be extra weight he’d have to carry, but also extra room to carry stuff in… If he could figure out how to carry them both at once without either of them making overly loud or obnoxious noises when he moved.

He could work that out later, he supposed.

For the time being, he began to refill his smaller bag and once it was about halfway full he headed off toward the mostly non-food item aisles. He grabbed a couple boxes of assorted plastic silverware, chips, a likely unhealthy amount of beef jerky, several packs of batteries of varying types (including rechargeable ones with a charger), a couple of flashlights and battery-operated lanterns, one of those small portable generators that was (according to the packaging) able to be charged via solar power, a small-ish solar panel to go with it that he rather precariously “mounted” to his larger backpack, some portable phone chargers, USB-charging cables, a single-burner cooktop, exactly one saucepan, a six-pack of ramen, a new set of everyday clothes to wear since his were getting pretty beat up two months into this and, last but not least, as many packs of baby wipes as he could shove into the remaining space in his bags.

It was a heavy haul, he’d admit, but it was worth it.

When he checked back at the front door, he found night was falling fast, so he cringed and made his way back into the store, deciding to explore the possible back rooms and employee only areas he could get to. Just to occupy himself until he felt like finding a place to sleep in this enormous superstore.

He ended up finding a back exit, next to which sat a ladder leading up to the roof. Score. He could hide out in this store for a couple days, he was sure, and he could leave his solar panel and portable generator on the roof to charge while he stayed inside in the shade for the while that he could convince himself to do so. He also found the employee break room, which was admittedly a tempting place to set up shop for the time he was there, but he didn’t like the idea of not being able to hear it if someone else came in.

It was with that in mind that he climbed onto one of the displays featuring a mattress and some other furniture, set his things down, and then went off exploring again to raid the pillows and blankets. It was a shame he couldn’t bring them with him, really, but he already had two sleeping bags rolled up and tied with twine to the front of his small backpack. Blankets weren’t exactly high on the list of materials he _needed._ They were just _wants._

As the need for sleep began to gnaw at his brain, he blew out his lantern and got cozy in his new bed, resolving to put on his new clothes in the morning in order to free up room in his backpacks.

He slept quite soundly on the display bed, and when he woke in the morning the first thing he did was grab his solar panel, his generator, his phone and all available chargers and cables, and a temporary backpack to carry them in, and climb up onto the roof to set them up for the time being. The early morning sun wouldn’t do much for him, he knew, but it would get brighter as the day went on.

He peeled the plastic covering off the solar panel, read through the instructions for the generator, and then left everything be. He felt kind of strange leaving his phone on the roof to charge it, but it wasn’t as if he’d been using it while it was dead anyway.

He headed back down the caged ladder (which was not fun to climb in either direction) and headed back into the building to change his clothes.

His specially chosen outfit this time was a tanktop and skinny jeans, while before he’d been wearing a t-shirt and regular blue jeans. It was smarter in a way, as he had less covering on him now, but he’d also picked _black_ this time around in order to make grime that wasn’t specifically dirt harder to see, so he could wear this outfit longer.

He gave himself a quick baby wipe bath before he put on the new outfit, scrubbing away almost obscene amounts of dirt, sand, and other such grime with the little towelettes. He was kind of glad he didn’t sweat, admittedly, in that moment. He couldn’t imagine all the salt left over from it that he’d have to carefully scrub away if he _could_ sweat.

That done he quickly changed, hunted down something to eat for breakfast without touching his travel stocks, ate, and decided to do a little more exploring so he wasn’t just sitting around bored all day.

He spent most of the day goofing off as quietly as he could, wandering the aisles in the dark as he didn’t want to waste kerosene… Although he remembered there were gallons of the stuff somewhere in the store. He guessed if he was careful and rearranged stuff he could take one of them…

He resolved to do that nearing nightfall, meandering back to his temporary base of operations and grabbing the lantern so he could seek out the kerosene.

He grabbed a gallon of it and took it back to his base, spending the next several minutes rearranging. Then he headed back up to the roof, collected his gear and headed back down.

At last he could get on his phone again, as it had received a full charge, and so had the generator and his portable chargers.

The date somewhat astonished him. It really _had_ been two months since the outbreak, he wasn’t just delusional. But that, in and of itself, made the fact that he’d been the first to break into this Walmart somewhat concerning. Where were all the survivors? Had they all gotten out already?

Well, he wouldn’t doubt that, actually, because the store had been _locked_ and had clearly been _closed_ before he arrived. But why hadn’t someone come and raided the store? Why hadn’t the workers cleared the shelves?

Maybe they’d all been in too much of a hurry to worry about it.

Or maybe this was a town full of doomsday preppers and they were all already fitted out to survive for the next five years or so. Just… Living in their basements or something. He snorted at the thought of several people all hunkered down in a regular old basement, and the image was only funny because he knew that if someone was a true doomsday prepper they’d have a bunker and not just a regular basement.

Otherwise, the image of a bunch of people hunkering down in a basement would be, at the very least, sad.

He screwed around a little on his phone as he laid on the bed he’d commandeered, eventually turning it back off and lying in darkness for a while. Lying there he considered his new outfit yet again (among other things), and laughed quietly when he realized it looked a lot like the one he’d picked out for Antisepticeye. It wasn’t an exact match, because the shirt wasn’t the right “shade” of black and the jeans weren’t yet torn at the knees, but it was close.

Man, maybe that was how he could get through this shitstorm. Just pretend he was Anti. Act as the character, act as the guy who liked violence, and everything would work out.

He’d have to try pretty hard to stay in character if he did that, though. Anti wasn’t _hard_ to act as by any means, but prolonged acting usually didn’t work out. He had to take breaks or he’d break character on accident. He knew that. It was just good that Anti’s attitude wasn’t hard to mimic since he just had to be confident and maybe a little giggly.

He’d need a weapon if he were to actually try and fight any zombies, though.

He stretched out on the bed and rolled onto his side, nestling into his covers and resolving to try and get himself into Anti’s mindset the best he could in the morning. But it wouldn’t hurt to practice before he went to sleep, would it? Nah, surely not.

He thought of all the things he knew Anti was, having created him. He thought of computer glitches and violence and knives. He thought of Darkiplier and how much Anti _adored_ tormenting him. He thought of the wild little giggle. He thought of the way that Anti would go after a zombie, given the opportunity, the uninhibited glee with which he’d take one apart piece by piece if he had the time. The way he’d cave in their skull if he was in a hurry. The sadistic way he’d crush another one’s head underfoot after he’d gotten it down.

Usually the gore would have made him gag, imaginary or not, but he guessed the attempt to get into Anti’s mindset had worked because it only made him want to giggle.

He fell asleep soon enough and dreamed dreams more violent than any he’d had in a long time. They paled in comparison to the nightmares he’d had when he’d first watched a zombie movie when he was young, of course, but only because now he wasn’t afraid of the violence, and the zombies that chased him did not catch and kill him, he evaded their grasp until he could kill them.

He woke feeling refreshed, if a little shaken, and laid in the bed a while longer, trying to push himself deeper into the demon’s mindset. He wasn’t sure if it worked, but when he finally got up and prepared himself to leave, he found himself wishing for anything he could use to attack a zombie if push came to shove. He didn’t specifically go looking for one, though. He just grabbed his stuff and set off.

As an afterthought, though, he headed back to the food aisles before he left completely and tore into a package of “fiber” chocolate chip granola bars, eating the whole box for his breakfast and washing them down with a chocolate protein shake from a nearby pack. Probably not his best plan, but it would work and he certainly wouldn’t be feeling weak any time soon.

He yawned, grabbed a pack of candy as he passed through the aisle it sat in, and quietly tucked it into his jacket.

And then he was picking his way back out of the front doors at last, emerging into the early morning sun and the quickly warming, humid outside air. The area of the store he’d been staying in was far enough from the exits to still be fairly cool, but at least the exposure to the sweltering outside heat had been gradual.

He eyed the position of the rising sun, adjusting himself in accordance with that, and headed Northwest as he’d been doing almost the whole time.

 

* * *

 

Something like a week and a half later, he came to the town he was currently in, nearing sundown. In something of a hurry to find shelter and keep his food stores up, he’d headed in through the back door of this house.

And now here he was, in the laundry room, trying to sleep because there was little else he could do. Not for the first time he wished for a weapon. Wished for the balls to actually head through a crowd of zombies. Wished for this to all be over. And all in the span of about two seconds.

He shook his head and burrowed further into his jacket, sleep at last coming to claim him as he rested his head on his backpacks.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, he stretched out, listened for the zombies he knew were outside the room, and carefully moved the boxes away from the door. Slow and steady, he opened the door. None of the zombies reacted. He sighed in relief and returned to his corner to gather his bags, resolving to eat his breakfast somewhere a little less zombie infested.

He avoided the zombies in the house the best he could as he crept back toward the back door and out into the yard. And, once he felt he was out of earshot, he sighed in relief and adjusted his bags, setting off down the road. So far the arrangement he’d come up with to carry them both was working spectacularly - a length of twine fastened the smaller one by its straps to the larger one simply by winding the twine around the larger one beneath its straps. And, yeah, they were heavy and made a little more noise than he would have liked, but they hadn’t gotten him killed yet and if he just kept being careful…

He ended up scaling the fire escape of a building and settling down on the roof to eat his breakfast, checking his phone as he did each morning. He was no longer, at this point, hoping to get signal or to get a message of any kind. He just wanted to double check the date and get an idea for how hot it was going to be via his phone’s weather app.

And, now, officially, two and a half months had passed, and he was just hoping that he’d survive _another_ two and a half months, if not longer.

He took a swig of water.

Here was to hoping.


End file.
